What I learned from working on a game every day for 30+ days

08 July 2015

As of writing my github commit streak is 37 days. I didn't start out thinking about trying to work on something everyday - I just wanted to work on a game in unity. However, I guess I got a little bit carried away, but I learned a ton in the process.

A little bit of background: I was the TA for a game design course in college and I taught my students how to use Unity as well as Maya. So, I had a little bit of previous knowledge of Unity (however Unity 3 which I would argue is quite different). Also, while I was responsible for teaching students how to 3D model in Maya almost every single one of my students was better at it than I was. I could teach the pieces, but I struggled to put them together.

When I was an undergrad I had actually taken the same game design course except using UE3 and Maya. Even then my models were a disaster - horrifyingly so (as I am told by my friend wilkie he still has nightmares about my creepy pacman mesh). Needless to say I thought that my attempts to 3D model again would also be terrible.

Dude, sucking at something is the first step towards being sort of good at something

The thing is they were.

tea kettle 3D mesh

However the cool thing about working on it every day is that I got the chance to try and improve every single day. Eventually, I tried to make an effort to make sure to have at least one commit on the game every single day.

As of writing this is pretty much where it stands:

Cuppa Tea menu demo

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

The key for me to learning and making progress was dealing with the fact that I would suck and working every day to improve it.